On December 13, FMC released a 152-page, fully-footnoted report called "False Premises, False Promises:A Quantitative History of Ownership Consolidation in the Radio Industry". Data in the report shows that station ownership consolidation at the national and local levels has led to fewer choices in radio programming and harmed the listening public and those working in the music and media industries, including DJs, programmers and musicians.
The report’s release generated loads of press and blog mentions, some of which we’ve linked to below. It also led the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to distribute a pre-emptive press release that called our research "questionable" and filled with "dubious data".
http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/radiostudy06nab.cfm
We were not surprised to see this press release; this was the same tactic that the NAB used in an attempt to discredit the validity of our 2002 study, Radio Deregulation: Has It Served Citizens and Musicians? - a report that has been cited over 500 times in the press, quoted in the FCC’s 2004 Report and Order, and in the decision rendered by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Prometheus v. FCC.
FMC prepared and posted a point-by-point rebuttal of the NAB’s statement, available at http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/radiostudy06fmcresponse.cfm
In the rebuttal, Peter DiCola, FMC’s Research Director and the report’s author, methodically points out the evidence contained in the report that countervails the NAB’s claims. Specifically:
- The NAB said that format diversity has continued to grow. FMC’s report shows that the NAB continues to use a faulty methodology to count format variety – a methodology that would treat a station that played the Rock/Classical/Jazz as totally and completely different from a station that played Rock/Jazz/Classical. FMC’s report, on the other hand, breaks these formats into their component parts and weights them accordingly.
- The NAB said that we had not recognized growth in Spanish and Asian-language format stations. FMC’s report does indeed recognize the growth of certain genres of radio, but also shows that, as a percentage of airtime, it’s much more likely that this type of programming is offered by small station groups as opposed to large station groups. In fact, 89 percent of Spanish-format programming is offered by small station groups (i.e. those strictly below the cap), and 75 percent of programming in the Asian, Korean, or Japanese formats is offered by small station groups.
If the NAB or its representatives have questions about our research or would dispute our conclusions, we would be glad to debate them publicly, as we always have been. But we can say that, based on our careful and thorough analysis of industry data, we have many reasons for concern about the effects of radio consolidation. Our new study, False Premises, False Promises documents them in detail.
FMC’s study and all appendices and supporting documents are available here:
http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/radiostudy06.cfm
PRESS CLIPS
Radio Is Wrecked—But It Can Be Repaired
John Nichols, The Nation, December 15, 2006
Consolidation Hurts
Jerry Del Colliano, Inside Music Media Blog, December 13, 2006
Inside the New Future of Music Coalition Study
Jerry Del Colliano, Inside Music Media Blog, January 4, 2007
Peter DiCola and Jenny Toomey guests on Counterspin
FAIR, December 22, 2006
Watchdog says US public hurt by radio consolidation
Reuters, December 13, 2006
FMC Releases Study On Local Radio And Diversity
FMBQ, December 13, 2006
Giving people power of the dial
Brad Kava, San Jose Mercury News, December 13, 2006
Report: Big Radio Is Fewer Formats, Smaller Audience
Jeffrey Yorke, Radio and Records/Mediaweek, December 13, 2006
Report Finds Radio Sameness
Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2006
Rage Against the Corporate Radio Machine
Radio Ink/Streaming Magazine, December 13, 2006
Coalition Knocks Radio Consolidation
Brooks Boliek, Hollywood Reporter, December 14, 2006